Wednesday, September 27, 2006

T.O.: The Afternoon Phase

OK, I can't possibly live-blog this TO thing entirely by myself, so I'm going to encourage any of you following the TO coverage -- whether on TV or online, via ESPN.com or blogs or whatever -- to chime in with your "coverage of the coverage" or just your analysis of the unfolding events. (Like the "experts" have anything more valuable or knowledgable to say than any of the rest of us?) Have at it!

As an FYI - The Drudge Report seems to have the most up-to-date coverage of this as it comes out. They were the first place I saw any news of T.O.'s denial and they have developing coverage of his press conference.

On a side note, my favorite evil yet hilarious lines so far stolen from around the Blogosphere:

A-Rod tried to commit suicide also, but couldn't find the pills at the bottom of his purse

I live about 35 minutes outside of Boston, and work in Providence. Not exactly prime T.O. or Dallas Cowboys territory.

I also listen to WEEI Sportsradio for most of my day. The dominating theme (in fact, the ONLY theme) of the past six hours has been Terrell Owens, the police report, the hospital interviews, the press conference / non press conference / postponed press conference, etc.

I know T.O. is big business for sports media, but there's a SLIGHT chance they might be overdoing this, just a little bit.

BILL SIMMONSJust. Kidding. Although I wish you had worked as hard on the Quickie as you do on the blog."

Personally, I liked the Quickie just as much as this blog, although you have much more freedom to cover stories throughout the day this way. With the Quickie, you got stuck if big news broke after 10AM.

As someone who has battled depression my entire adult life, I understand what may have motivated T.O. to take too many pills, Certainly don't condone it, but (to quote both Sam Kinison and Chris Rock)I UNDERSTAND it.

Basically, if you buy TO and his publicist's comments in this conference, TO was loco and could have said anything, and the police are flat-out lying (there was nothing wrong with her, so either she said he said he was depressed, and she took the pills out of his mouth, or the cops who wrote the report made it up). Whatever really went on, this kind of crap could ONLY happen to T.O. Good grief.

Why didn't he come out early this morning and say...guys this is bullshit?? He is sick. How much time, energy and brain cells did we all lose dealing with his shenanigans?

God he is f-ed up. I have to seriously doubt the credibility of anyone out there who is a legitimate "fan" of his. Even sympathetic. He is such a bad role model for kids, adults, and everyone in between. He's going to be the boy the cried wolf...

Not only did they cut into their live coverage of the school hostage situation in Colorado to show T.O.'s press conference, but did you see some of the quotes they pulled out of his statement to turn into "instant history" blurbs on the bottom of the screen?

From Bill Simmons live chat today. What is with his last statement about not putting enough into the Quickie?

Luke (Nashville): How many more years do you see yourself being the Sports Guy if you do leave the Disney family are you going to set up a blog similar to what Shanoff has done?

Bill Simmons: (2:39 PM ET ) Who's Shanoff?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------STEVE(ROCHESTER, N.Y.): WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE UFC BLOWING UP THE WAY IT HAS

Bill Simmons: (2:39 PM ET ) I think boxing should learn from it. The UFC is great at A.) packaging their fighters, and B.) beefing up their PPV cards so there are 4-5 must-see fights on each one. If there's a bad main event, that's not necessarily a problem because you might see 2 other great fights. With boxing, if you pay 50 bucks for a card and the main event stinks, you're screwed.

4 hour chat today (although he cheated by doing a little play-by-play of the TO press conference).

While I'm not Simmons, my take on the Shanoff comments is that Bill has never been fond of the Instant History shtick; he prefers longer, more uniform thoughts (this is the guy who can write 900+ words on movies like Varsity Blues). So I think by 'working harder' he was looking for more drawn-out thoughts and less shotgun firing approaches to doing the DQ.

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DanShanoff.com is a sports-blog spin-off of my long-time ESPN.com column, "The Daily Quickie." Anchored by an early-morning post of must-know topics, the blog is updated frequently throughout the day with new posts and user comments.